Your career in 2018 (referencing 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics)

Each year Gartner publishes Magic Quadrants for several technologies, including one for Business Intelligence and Analytics. Let’s take a look at this year’s.

The “2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics” document was published earlier in the year, but as we are at the end of the year, it is a good time to take stock of the industry and your career in this field.

Below is an image of the results published by Gartner for 2017. As you can see, from their perspective, Tableau and Microsoft lead the way, with Qlik also in the leader quadrant.

Source: Gartner

Since the same 3 players were also in the leader quadrant in 2016 and 2015 (along with others), we know they are solid.

So, based on this, if you are primarily an Oracle BI (OBI), IBM Cognos, or SAP Business Objects (BO) person (for example), you may consider learning or at least getting exposure to one or more of the 3 platforms in the Leaders quadrant. There is still plenty of work out there for OBI, Cognos, BO and other platforms, but having additional technical/platform skills in leading platforms never hurts.

And this is just a broad suggestion, because you may find that developing skills in Salesforce (for example) is a better strategic move for you based on your situation. The bottom-line is, assess your career/skills/goals/etc., and plan on learning something new in 2018. Don’t stop learning!